Driving Tech Adoption that Delivers on Strategy
How capital project organizations can build ownership, sustain momentum, and turn technology into a lasting value-driver
THE TECH STRATEGY SERIES FOR CAPITAL CONSTRUCTION
When technological change delivers its intended business value, that’s because it started with a clear vision, the right team, and aligned execution across three connected stages:
1
Building the case for change: Establish the business need, expected value, and organizational alignment.
2
Selecting the right solution: Assemble a strategy-aligned team and evaluate options against business requirements.
3
Driving adoption: Lead the people, processes, and accountability required to realize the intended benefits.
1
Building the case for change: Establish the business need, expected value, and organizational alignment.
2
Selecting the right solution: Assemble a strategy-aligned team and evaluate options against business requirements.
3
Driving adoption: Lead the people, processes, and accountability required to realize the intended benefits.
InEight has compiled three expert guides that detail proven practices that lead to positive transformation journeys—including the key questions champions should keep in mind along the way.
This is guide THREE: Driving Tech Adoption that Delivers on Strategy
Driving Tech Adoption that Delivers on Strategy
Treat Adoption as a Long-Term Business-Change Effort
By the time an organization begins implementing new technology, much of the strategic work should already be in place. The business case has established why change matters. The selection process has translated those goals into future-state processes and requirements, and an aligned technology decision has been made. The next challenge is turning those decisions into the way work actually gets done. That’s where transformations frequently lose momentum. But a carefully selected and managed adoption team can make the difference. More than 70% of organizations pursuing major digital initiatives or transformations see the effort slow or stall—either before reaching full scale, or after scaling but before achieving expected impact, according to a McKinsey global survey. The report’s authors noted that moving beyond the pilot phase is often the first major stumbling block in transformation execution.
More than 70% of organizations pursuing major digital initiatives or transformations see the effort slow or stall—either before reaching full scale, or after scaling but before achieving expected impact
More than 70% of organizations pursuing major digital initiatives or transformations see the effort slow or stall—either before reaching full scale, or after scaling but before achieving expected impact
To keep a technology initiative on track toward achieving the positive outcomes identified in the business case, the adoption team must understand a key principle: adoption is a long-term business change effort, not an IT rollout. And from the champion to the executive sponsor to the people managing change across every team at the ground level, the strategic goals that prompted the investment should remain the adoption team’s North Star.
“Tech transformation guides a new way of doing business. It’s not about software. It’s about helping the business. It’s about helping people achieve better targets within the business.”
- InEight Global Research Participant (Business Leader, Owner Firm)
Driving Tech Adoption that Delivers on Strategy
1. Carry the Strategy Through the Details
Implementation quickly becomes detailed as teams work through the specifics for configurations, integrations, permissions, workflows, and individual features. Those decisions matter, but they can also consume so much attention that the original business objectives start to fade. That creates risk, because people rarely absorb training if they don't yet understand or want the change.
people rarely absorb training if they don't yet understand or want the change.
Take a Holistic Approach to Change
Maintaining that “why” grounding is particularly important when a process change creates additional work for one group, while producing better outcomes for the wider business. For example, a field team may be asked to capture more data so that project leaders can gain better insight into productivity and respond sooner. The change might not be welcome at first glance, but at the business level, those extra steps may be essential to achieving the outcome that justified the transformation. The adoption team needs to set expectations appropriately and persistently connect the details to that larger purpose. Otherwise, teams risk becoming absorbed in individual “button clicks” and losing sight of aligned goals, such as accurate benchmarking or improved transparency. Consistently returning to established goals helps teams move beyond familiar ways of working that may no longer serve the future-state process.
Build Awareness and Desire Before Ability
Established change-management practices, such as the widely used Prosci ADKAR® Model, can help reinforce those connections. The sequence has proven useful for technology rollouts because people need to understand the reason for the change and how it benefits their work before focusing on software training—and then receive reinforcement as the new tech and processes become everyday practice.
The Prosci ADKAR® Model for Facilitating Change
FOCUS ON THE NEED BEHIND THE CHANGE
The further you get from the selection process, the easier it is to drown in button-clicks and lose the goals behind the initiative.
Questions to help keep the “why” in focus:
- Are strategic goals being actively reinforced throughout implementation?
- Can major scope decisions and milestones be connected to those goals?
- Do affected groups understand why their participation matters?
- Do teams understand why an individual workflow may become more demanding in order to improve an organization-wide outcome?
- Have communication and engagement started well before formal training?
Driving Tech Adoption that Delivers on Strategy
2. Build a Tight Team with Real Capacity
Transformation work competes with responsibilities carrying immediate consequences. Bids have deadlines. Projects have schedules. Month-end always arrives on time. That’s why, to maintain momentum, the adoption team must have protected capacity to carry the initiative forward. The best operators are the ones nobody wants to give up—which makes them ideal team members. Across InEight’s implementation experience, smaller teams with meaningful dedicated time tend to work better than large groups whose participation is squeezed in around operational responsibilities. As Zach Rients, Senior Delivery Manager at InEight, puts it: “I’ll take one person at 50-plus percent over 10 people at 10 percent any day.” The strongest adoption team model is a core group pulled substantially away from operations, supported by subject-matter experts who join when their knowledge is needed. With the core team as a constant, team composition can evolve as implementation advances.
Create Concentric Circles of StakeholderS
The adoption team needs people who can bridge business understanding and action. Think about creating “concentric circles” of participation: senior leaders help establish direction during selection, a smaller hands-on team works through solution design and implementation, and project teams and end-users become increasingly involved as the organization moves into pilot and rollout. This approach brings more committed people into the transformation effort—without creating an unwieldy day-to-day team.
“I’ll take one person at 50-plus percent over 10 people at 10 percent any day.”
- Zach Rients, Senior Delivery Manager, InEight
Concentric circles of stakeholders......
BUILD THE RIGHT TEAM FOR THE WORK AHEAD
One of the biggest predictors of stall is a bloated team of part-timers.
Questions to help build a tight team:
- Who should be part of the dedicated core team?
- Is meaningful capacity protected from normal operational demands?
- Are solution experts both senior enough to make process decisions—and willing to get hands-on?
- Which SMEs should be brought in at defined stages?
- Are the roles clear—who can resolve decisions that cross business or functional boundaries?
- How should participation expand as pilot and rollout approach?
Driving Tech Adoption that Delivers on Strategy
3. Build Ownership Through Hands-On Work
The vendor brings product expertise and implementation experience. The customer brings detailed knowledge of its business, people, processes, standards, and intended outcomes. Ultimately, the customer organization needs to own the resulting solution—and that ownership develops through hands-on work. Internal solution experts need to load realistic data, configure workflows, test scenarios, change settings, and see how decisions affect downstream processes. Training can explain what the technology does, but direct experience builds the confidence to understand how the configured solution behaves within the organization’s operating environment.
“There has to be someone who’s going to grab the tools and actually put in the work to configure the solution to meet the organization’s specific business requirements.”
- Megan Siefker, Customer Success Director, InEight
The Only Way Is Through
Depth of experience becomes especially valuable when something doesn’t work as expected. Teams need enough understanding to determine whether an issue comes from configuration, process design, integration, training, or functionality—and then work productively with the vendor on the right response. By the end of implementation, the organization should have internal experts capable of explaining how the solution supports its processes, helping users succeed, and carrying the knowledge into broader rollout. This is the start of the messy middle. To make it through, leadership must reinforce ownership and make it clear that there’s no going back, so the organization must commit to making it work.
BUILD INTERNAL OWNERSHIP WITH CONFIDENCE
Confidence—and good configuration decisions—come from doing, not watching.
Questions to help build internal ownership:
- Are solution experts actively working with realistic data and scenarios?
- Can they explain how important configuration choices support the future-state process?
- Can the team diagnose problems instead of handing them back to the vendor?
- Is feedback from project teams reaching the people who can act on it?
- Is leadership reinforcing that there’s no going back to old ways?
Driving Tech Adoption that Delivers on Strategy
4. Communicate the Change and Establish Governance
Most end-users won’t have participated in building the business case or selecting the solution, so as rollout approaches, sustained communication should prepare them for what’s coming, and make the change relevant to their work. In a Forrester survey of B2B transformation executives, 55% cited poor cross-functional communication of transformation goals as a top strategic alignment challenge.
In a Forrester survey of B2B transformation executives, 55% cited poor cross-functional communication of transformation goals as a top strategic alignment challenge
In a Forrester survey of B2B transformation executives, 55% cited poor cross-functional communication of transformation goals as a top strategic alignment challenge
For capital construction organizations, that sequenced communication may travel through executive messages, all-hands meetings, project management meetings, regional teams, functional groups, and project-level conversations.
CHOOSE A PROJECT NAME EMPLOYEES CAN RALLY AROUND.
A good project name can help emphasize the alignment behind the initiative, reinforce that it’s an organization-wide effort, and provide a touchpoint people can rally around. The message should become more specific over time: what is changing and why, how it affects different roles, when the transitions will occur, and what support and training people will receive and when.
Different groups will need different emphasis. Project controls teams may focus on standardization and data quality. Field users may need to understand why additional data capture matters. A regional business unit may need clarity about which practices will become enterprise standards and where local flexibility will remain.
Avoiding Garbage In, Garbage Out
Governance belongs in the conversation as well. A system can be broadly deployed while inconsistent tags, workflows, reporting structures, or data standards undermine the information it was intended to produce. InEight has seen governance become particularly vulnerable when implementation teams accelerate the schedule. The immediate rollout may move faster, while future dashboards suffer. Implementation creates an important opportunity to determine what the organization will standardize across business units, and where differences are genuinely required by market, project type, or operating model.
COMMUNICATION AND GOVERNANCE TOGETHER
Successful adoption requires a real communication effort and real guardrails.
Questions to help plan communications and governance:
- Which audiences need different messages based on role, process, region, or timing?
- Which established communication channels can reinforce the change?
- When should employees first hear about the initiative?
- Does the initiative have a project name to rally around?
- Which data, workflow, and reporting standards must be consistent?
- Where can business units or projects retain flexibility?
- How will the team protect governance work if the schedule tightens?
Driving Tech Adoption that Delivers on Strategy
5. Use the Pilot as a Learning Lab
At this point, the organization has already selected the solution and completed substantial configuration and testing. Real users are working with real roles and permissions, integrations are communicating with external systems, and workflows begin to encounter circumstances the implementation team could not anticipate. A pilot is the organization’s first production project, providing an opportunity to learn, without risking the whole organization. It is not a final go/no-go test, since the organization has already decided to proceed.
“The pilot is really your first project in production.”
- Zach Rients, Senior Delivery Manager, InEight
Pilot a Representative, Best-fit, Low-risk Project
A complex mega-project may seem like the strongest proof point for a pilot, but it introduces too many variables at the same time the organization is trying to learn. InEight experts recommend choosing a representative project with manageable risk and users who are open to the change, such as an estimating project. The team also needs time to see the process through a meaningful operating cycle to reveal issues that may not appear during day-to-day testing. InEight experts suggest running the pilot through at least one month-end close to surface issues as estimating, scheduling, progress tracking, forecasting, reporting, and financial processes come together. For large transformations, that may mean staged pilots across business units, regions, or process areas rather than one enterprise-wide deployment so those lessons can be captured and applied before rollout expands.
LEARN BEFORE YOU SCALE
A pilot is for learning, not proof of concept, as the organization has already decided to move forward.
Questions to maximize the pilot as a learning lab:
- Is the pilot representative of normal operations, while keeping risk manageable?
- Which process, integration, data, and adoption questions should the pilot answer?
- Will it run through enough real operating cycles to expose downstream issues?
- How will lessons and required changes be captured?
- Should rollout proceed in stages across projects, regions, or business units?
Driving Tech Adoption that Delivers on Strategy
6. Sustain Adoption Beyond Rollout
Reaching rollout is a major milestone, but it does not secure the full value of the transformation. Adoption is an ongoing process that requires ongoing attention. McKinsey’s global transformation research makes the risk clear: organizations reported losing an average of 42% of the potential financial value of their transformations during the later execution and sustaining stages, and only 12% of respondents said their organizations had sustained transformation gains for more than three years. For the adoption team, that means the work continues as more projects, business units, and users come onto the new system.
42% of the potential financial value of their transformations during the later execution and sustaining stages, and only 12% of respondents said their organizations had sustained transformation gains for more than three years.
42% of the potential financial value of their transformations during the later execution and sustaining stages, and only 12% of respondents said their organizations had sustained transformation gains for more than three years.
Keep the Feedback Loop Active
As use expands, teams encounter new workflows, project conditions, and operating requirements. Maintaining a regular feedback loop with project teams helps surface issues early and gives the adoption team a way to refine configuration, processes, training, and governance, as needed. The measures established at the beginning of the effort should remain part of that loop. System usage is one indicator, but quality and consistency of the data being produced are stronger signals, as they connect directly to the “why” in the original case for change. Organizations should continue to assess whether information is flowing as intended, reporting is reliable, and the new processes are supporting the defined business outcomes.
“Transformation is a continuous improvement, lifelong, never-ending process.”
- Rick Rients, Director of Client Success, InEight
Reinforce Governance and Accountability
Standards that work well with a small initial group can become harder to maintain across additional projects, business units, or regions. Clear ownership of data standards, reporting structures, required processes, and approved variations helps preserve consistency, while allowing the organization to adapt where business needs differ. Executive sponsorship remains important during this stage. Periodic leadership involvement can help resolve decisions, reinforce priorities, and make sure the adoption effort continues to receive the resources it requires as other business demands emerge. As adoption expands, teams will also encounter different levels of engagement and resistance. Some questions may identify legitimate process or configuration issues, others could signal unwillingness to adopt the new way of working. Clear decision ownership and escalation paths will help the team distinguish between issues that require adjustment and decisions that need to be reinforced, while keeping rollout moving.
Plan for Long-Term Ownership
Organizations should also plan for ownership after the formal implementation phase ends. In InEight’s experience, the need for ongoing support is often underestimated in the case for change. The long-term ownership model may include responsibility for user support, training, governance, process refinement, system changes, and coordination with the technology provider. The adoption team membership may change over time, but the knowledge, ownership, and decision-making capability developed should remain. This provides an established foundation for responding to new projects, changing business requirements, evolving processes, and future technology opportunities, without starting from scratch each time.
MEASURE AND SUSTAIN ADOPTION
Sustained adoption requires continued accountability, governance, and attention to business outcomes. Track data quality as a measure of success.
Questions to drive accountability and sustain adoption:
- Are the resulting data complete, consistent, and producing useful dashboards?
- Who owns governance and support after initial implementation?
- Who is accountable for ongoing process improvement?
- How will you handle resistance across the enthusiast-skeptic spectrum?
- Are the business outcomes from the original case beginning to materialize?
- How will new requirements and capabilities be evaluated?
Driving Tech Adoption that Delivers on Strategy
Turn the Investment into an Operating Capability
The transformation journey begins with defining why change matters. Selection translates those goals into future-state processes and a technology decision. Adoption is the long-term phase that carries that work into projects, workflows, and everyday behavior. The lasting result is more than successfully deployed technology. The organization develops a stronger operating model, clean data that drives better decisions, and a team with the internal knowledge and process ownership [BG1] to keep improving in pursuit of the goals established in the case for change.
Research Notes
Technology Alignment Differentiates Today’s Capital Construction Leaders
InEight conducted in-depth qualitative research with capital project leaders from around the world about their approach to technology acquisition and digital transformation. Through approximately 60 hours of one-on-one interviews and online discussion, the research found that leaders at companies that are setting the pace in their markets think about technology differently—and they think big, aligning teams, tech, and strategy around unified organizational goals. This aligned approach provides the foundation for their operational success, empowering them to leapfrog competitors.
MOVE FROM IMPLEMENTATION, TO LASTING ADOPTION, TO IMPACT
InEight helps capital project organizations connect processes, data, and teams across the project lifecycle—providing a foundation for more consistent execution, stronger visibility, and continuous improvement.
Explore how InEight can support your organization’s transformation journey.
ABOUT INEIGHT
InEight is a leader in construction project controls software, empowering over 850 companies taking on challenging projects in industries including construction and engineering; transportation infrastructure; mining; water; power and renewables; and oil, gas and chemical. Uniquely suited to capital construction and other complex work, our integrated, modular software manages projects worth over $1 trillion globally, taking control of project information management, costs, schedules, contracts, and construction operations, and delivering insights with advanced analytics and AI. InEight's solutions adapt and scale to meet the dynamic needs of modern construction, driving operational excellence and successful project outcomes. For more information, follow InEight on LinkedIn or visit InEight.com. © 2026 InEight, Inc. All Rights Reserved